A University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led team has developed a new superconducting diode, a key component in electronic devices, that could help scale up quantum computers for industry use and improve the performance of artificial intelligence systems.
The paper is published in Nature Communications, a peer-reviewed scientific journal that covers the natural sciences and engineering.
A diode allows current to flow one way but not the other in an electrical circuit. It essentially serves as half of a transistor — which is the main element in computer chips. Diodes are typically made with semiconductors, substances with electrical properties that form the base for most electronics and computers, but researchers are interested in making them with superconductors, which additionally have the ability to transfer energy without losing any power along the way.
Compared to other superconducting diodes, the researchers’ device is more energy efficient, can process multiple electrical signals at a time, and contains a series of gates to control the flow of energy, a feature that has never before been integrated into a superconducting diode.
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